Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding. Very well written
Review: This book is the best book on J2EE I have read thus far. It doesn't overwhelm with unnecessary jargon and complexities. It sticks to what you need to know to get you started programming web services using J2EE. It provides an in depth discussion without bogging the reader down in too much minutiae. It is also an indispensable reference manual for professional J2EE programmers.
Rating:
Summary: An essential tool for Web services programmers
Review: This book is well written and explains what you need to know. This is absolutely the best book on J2EE and web services that I have ever read. From front to back, this book is chock full of great information. The best thing about this book is that it includes wonderful examples to help step you through the concepts as they are introduced. It is finely detailed, intelligible and at times a pleasure to read. The book has depth but does not rush to get there. This book is fantastic.
Rating:
Summary: Delivers exactly what it says. Good practical book
Review: This is a cover-to-cover learning book and as such does an excellent job. I would strongly recommend it to anyone who needs to become proficient in J2EE and Web Services. The book gives a quick overview, then digs down and goes into details of how to build every aspect of a web services application using the J2EE programming language. This is not for Java beginners. This is a meaty real world book designed for professional programmers.
Rating: 
Summary: Not what I expected based on these reviews
Review: This is a solid introduction to J2EE, and to some aspects of Java, for that matter. I assumed that a "complete J2EE reference" would dispense with the typical introductory concepts, and move directly to advanced topics, but that is not the case. The author writes well, and clearly, but wrote for the wrong audience. It also appears as if some deadline pressures dramatically influenced the construction of this book. For example, several chapters are devoted to explaing JDBC in painstaking detail, right down to constructing SQL statements. These are topics that I would expect anyone picking up this book to already know. Later in the book, topics like EJB, RMI, or JMS received very few pages. I should also point out that the book is roughly 550 to 600 pages -- pp. 700+ are appendices, and 100 to 150 pages of the text are "quick reference guides," which fall far short of API documentation. As mentioned elsewhere, the accuracy of the code samples is laughable. Errors are so frequent that I passed the irritated and disturbed stages early on, and quickly moved to amused. C'mon, when 50% of the already limited code samples have errors, you have to chuckle! The good point about this book is that it provides an accurate birds-eye view of J2EE, and can be used by anyone to learn how the various puzzle pieces fit together. J2EE is vast, and the book can help you navigate to the specific subjects that you want to drill down into.
Rating: 
Summary: Should be "0 star" book.
Review: This is a worst book I have been read. It is full of Java APIs listing like "yellow pages". None of topic touch the depth.
I don't understand why the rating of this book is so high. (Maybe some friends of the author wrote them. :)
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